Fighting ‘Big Brother'

Le Monde considers that the public must not be kept ignorant of wire-tapping and surveillance programmes which are assuming dimensions such that they destroy any principle of democratic checks and balances.

This is a new episode in the Snowden revelations, from the name of the former American National Security Agency (NSA) consultant who exposed the extent of the electronic espionage carried out by the United States in the world. Le Monde has obtained some of the ex-agent's documents. Our journalists have worked in association with his main contact, the American journalist and blogger, Glenn Greenwald, who controls this mass of data and lives in Brazil. Other international newspapers, like The Guardian, have shed light this year on many aspects of this massive electronic espionage. Le Monde has focused on the way in which the NSA has worked on French targets.

Le Monde has been working with Glenn Greenwald and his team since the month of August. He has been acting as the custodian of the documents since he interviewed Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in June for The Guardian; the journalist, a former lawyer and strong defender of civil liberties will now contribute to our columns in a joint effort to make the information contained in these thousands of files easier to understand and to put into perspective.

Le Monde has formed a team of a dozen journalists who have focused mainly on two areas: the history of the NSA's surveillance programme Prism, recapitulating some of the elements already published in the foreign press working with Mr. Greenwald; and the surveillance of France by American Intelligence Agencies about which little has filtered to date.

The very diverse nature of these documents and the fact that they are highly technical meant that they each required careful scrutiny and an in-depth analysis to endeavor to give them their full meaning and value. The NSA documents obtained by Le Monde have also given rise to an investigation in France. We have invited official French sources to respond to this information.

Le Monde considers that the public must not be kept ignorant of wire-tapping and surveillance programmes which are assuming dimensions such that they destroy any principle of democratic checks and balances. Our approach is not to uphold or to practice absolute transparency which would consist in publishing all the data about everything, in its totality and irresponsibly. The ‘Snowden revelations' are not aimed at weakening democratic societies but at strengthening them, promoting awareness of the risks which this vast data search implies for our values, as it enables our lives, our contacts and our opinions to be read like an open book.

For Le Monde this approach is consistent with the investigations devoted in recent years to the question of individual and civil liberties. Thus, in July our newspaper published an investigation into the surveillance of electronic and telephone communications carried out by the external intelligence service, the DGSE (Direction générale de la sécurité éxterieure). Reporting the secret electronic ‘war' which is ongoing in the corridors of our democracies is also a way of highlighting the lack of in-depth political discussion on questions of surveillance of citizens.

Freedom to communicate and to confidentiality in correspondence is a keystone in the working of democracies. Systematic invasion of private life is the distinctive feature of totalitarian systems, as the film ‘The Lives of Others' recalled describing the Stasi in East Germany.The approach of the media involved in the Snowden revelations has undoubtedly met with criticism. In the United Kingdom, the polemic is at its height since the Director-General of MI5, Andrew Parker, compared the work of the press on these documents to a blow to Britain's intelligence services combating terrorism and other threats to national security. Le Monde, like The Guardian refutes this allegation. To this day, the way in which the information is chosen and distributed respects a cardinal principal: none of the documents revealed provides any details on the way in which the NSA monitors the doings of autocratic countries like China and Russia, nor those of non-State groups representing a threat to security.

The rules adopted by Edward Snowden and Greenwald, and to which Le Monde subscribes, are based on a principle of responsibility. There is no intention to threaten the security of the United States or their allies, but rather to shed light on secret espionage programmes carried out by a democratic country, whether these concern its own citizens or those of allied countries. More than twelve years after the 11 September terrorist attacks, the question of finding a balance between national security, civil liberties and the right to information is still vivid.

As we know, the paradox in the Snowden affair is that the former agent, wanted by American courts, took refuge in Russia, a country with a repressive regime. But, by ensuring as he did in a recent interview for the New York Times that he had not transmitted any NSA documents to the Russian or Chinese authorities, Edward Snowden has adopted a stance of ‘whistle blower', concerned about the public interest and democracy – and not in the service of foreign powers. Respect for this line of conduct is fundamental and will be tested over time.

The documents transmitted by Snowden focus attention on a major issue: at a time when the power of new technologies has made a planet level ‘Big Brother' possible; it is urgent to discuss the impact of the phenomenon on our freedom. And to ensure that the work of the security organs in democratic states be regulated by efficient parliamentary or judicial control procedures. We are far from this today. This concern is equally applicable to the activities of the American Internet giants, which have given their support to the NSA. By cooperating with Le Monde, Glenn Greenwald has wished to contribute to raising this awareness. In the United Kingdom and in Germany, the discovery of the siphoning-off of personal data by the NSA, as well as the involvement of the Intelligence Services in these countries, have become issues of intensive debate. We can only hope that this will also be the case in France. And that the European Union will take action.